Edited by Joan Beaumont and Matthew Jordan and foreword by Dennis Richardson

Australia and the World celebrates the pioneering role of Neville Meaney in the formation and development of foreign relations history in Australia and his profound influence on its study, teaching and application.

The contributors to the volume – historians, practitioners of foreign relations and political commentators, many of whom were taught by Meaney at the University of Sydney over the years – focus especially on the interaction between geopolitics, culture and ideology in shaping Australian and American approaches to the world.

Individual chapters examine a number of major themes informing Neville Meaney's work, including the sources and nature of Australia's British identity; the hapless, if dedicated, efforts of Australian politicians, public servants and intellectuals to reconcile this intense cultural identity with Australia's strategic anxieties in the Asia-Pacific region; and the sense of trauma created when the myth of ‘Britishness’ collapsed under the weight of new historical circumstances in the 1960s. They survey relations between Australia and the United States in the years after World War Two. Finally, they assess the US perceptions of itself as an ‘exceptional’ nation with a mission to spread democracy and liberty to the wider world and the way in which this self-perception has influenced its behaviour in international affairs.

Dennis Richardson is the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Joan Beaumont is a professor of history in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

Matthew Jordan works as a historian in the Historical Publications and Information section of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Acknowledgements
ForewordDennis Richardson

Australia and the world: Neville Meaney and the making of foreign relations history in Australia
1. Not the Cinderella it once seemed: the historiography of Australian foreign policy Joan Beaumont
2. Australia and Japan in focus: from image to comparative history Hugh Clarke
3. Pondering Australia’s world: Neville Meaney on the role of culture, ideology and geopolitics in American and Australian foreign policy history Matthew Jordan

Sentiment and self-interest in Australian public and intellectual life
6. A military mission for Greater Britain: Edward Hutton’s ‘A Co-operative System for Defence of the Empire’ Richard Lehane
7. Robert Randolph Garran and the creation of the Australian Commonwealth Colin Milner
8. A.C.V. Melbourne in Australian international thought: nationalism and appeasement between the World Wars James Cotton

The British world compared
9. The political cultures of Australia and Britain: how alike were they? Ross McKibbin
10. The ‘new nationalism’ in Australia, Canada and New Zealand: civic culture in the wake of the British world Stuart Ward

Dependent ally? Australian–American relations
11. Cold War ‘love feast’: the first US presidential visit to Australia, October 1966 James Curran
12. Too much memory: writing the history of Australian–American relations during the Howard years David McLean

The making and unmaking of American nationalism
13. Becoming Wilsonian: Woodrow Wilson’s conversion to the American national myth David T. Rowlands
14. Recovering the roots of Reinhold Neibuhr’s critique of American nationalism Michael G. Thompson
15. An ideological odyssey: Nixon, China and the decline of American nationalism Tom Switzer